Stability or Disaster?

In Sweden where same-sex marriage (SSM) is legal family life is slowly dying.

We in the UK should be warned. But the central problem with the government’s proposals for SSM lies with their irrelevance - irrelevant to marriage itself, to those contemplating it, and by extension irrelevant to any children from a normal marriage union. (not to mention its irrelevance as a political issue for something like 98% of the British electorate as opposed to the tiny minority of "gay" activists)

Firstly, and as it has been pointed out, when the Attlee Government legislated to regulate marriage, “it simply presupposed that it could only ever be the union of one man and one woman. No one said anything, because it was so obvious.”

Secondly, as others have noted, the SSM proposals are essentially “deviations"away from all long held and universal understanding of marriage, for SSM focuses on the wrong people, in a wrong relationship, in a context that is wholly artificial. The whole ethos of marriage beginning with the process of friendship, to courtship, mutual engagement, to normal heterosexual marriage, and the gift of children, cannot by definition be extended to the artificial concept of a same sex couple. Thus on the basis of biological compatibility alone, it must be a lie! At best, the minute proportion of potential SSM "marriages", even within the "gay" community will be so small as to be statistically zilch. Why then this massive political, social, legal (and costly) revolution conferring special privileges for such a tiny minority?

Mr Cameron has the impossible self-inflicted task of trying to explain away the normality of traditional marriage - one man, one woman for life, in order to attempt forcing into it a fictional meaning that will make little sense or relevance to the great majority of men and women who habitually marry in the traditional way?

In doing so he will attempt to smuggle into Parliament and then the nation, the Trojan Horse of SSM, telling us that it really is a very normal sort of a horse. But be warned, it may well give birth to some strange and unwanted creatures in years to come as polygamists, bigamists, bisexuals and polyamorists all clamour to be recognised as eligible for 'marriage', all of which would be entirely destructive of the ‘family values’ which this and all governments profess to support. That is the inescapable logic of legalised SSM and the gross hypocrisy behind the proposed legislation

However, what is more alarming is the failure by government to understand the impact of this upon the most vulnerable of all, namely children. For them there are all manner of complications in store if SSM is legalised, not least that they may well be separated from their own biological parents through a complex minefield of “legal” interpretations of new marriage laws.

This potential plight of children in a sexual free-for-all appears to be the very important but missing element in the government’s thinking. So the central and natural place of children in a normal marriage would be replaced by the unnatural and artificial “rights” of the homosexual community in a new State created concept of marriage.

Fortunately, many opponents of SSM have thought through the issues rather more clearly than the government, and prominent amongst these is Dr. Jennifer Morse of the Ruth Institute (USA). Dr Morse gives some sound reasons why SSM is both irrelevant to real marriage, and particularly, as she reasons, for its largely forgotten and potential child victims. Here is an edited selection of some excellent points made by Dr Morse and applied to the UK context in the light of these proposals.

She states first of all the basic and foundational premise that :

The essential public purpose of marriage is to attach a mother and a father to their children and to one another.

Given this, then every child is entitled to know and be known by both parents.

Adult society must protect the child’s right to affiliation with both parents.

Without man/woman marriage there will be no institution specifically protecting the rights of children to be in relation with both parents.

Children have the best life chances when they are raised by their biological married parents.

Man/woman marriage provides children with access to their genetic, cultural and social heritage.

Man/woman marriage sets the foundation for children to have the same biological, legal, and care-giving parents. SSM separates these functions.

SSM changes marriage from a child-centered institution to an adult centered institution.

SSM is a creation of the State. Man/woman marriage is an organic institution specifically ordained by God.

SSM will require protection by the State through a multiplicity of complex laws. Man/woman marriage can sustain itself.

SSM once instituted as legal affects everybody because the legal definition applies to everyone with all the immense changes implied, not just the tiny minority of homosexuals.

SSM amounts to a hostile take-over of civil society by the State on ideological grounds. But we do not vote MPs into office for them to impose their own private ideological beliefs on the majority of the population.

SSM leads to relational chaos and opens the door to children having more than two “legal” parents.

SSM eliminates the legal principle that biology is the primary means of establishing the God given parental rights and responsibilities.

Government belief that SSM is equivalent to man/woman marriage is a lie – “what God has joined together let not man put asunder”.

SSM and the redefining of marriage will be an extremely difficult concept for children themselves to grasp, and especially for the very young. Why should they be made to grapple with such newly created problems of adult making? And why muddy the clear waters of the familiar ‘mum and dad’ figures which for them are normal and natural – well established in our Christian based culture?

Further, why should parents and children be forced to abandon a traditional view of marriage, and children indoctrinated into an alien SSM ideology when their parents may wish to teach them according to their own values and world-view? Is there a single sound reason why our Christian, or for that matter secular, or educational cultures should all be abandoned at the whim of politicians?

Finally, SSM is yet another frivolous, unnecessary, and expensive piece of social engineering for which the government has been given no mandate by the electorate, and for this reason alone should be dropped immediately.